Jiji

I feel the same way as you and many others in this thread: don't like (sometimes hate) Ibushi's style but he's had so many good matches despite that. He's also gotten a little bit better in harnessing his goofy shit. Will check out the Masters matches but they'd have to be mighty special for me to vote for him.

Doesn't that go against the entire point of the tournament? If you don't know somebody, watch some of their matches. If you don't have the time or the inclination, abstain.

I've been meaning to play Valiant Hearts since it came out but I knew it would be a freebie one day and that day is nearly here. Huzzah.

Except he's turned the ostentatious shit to 11.

This Golden State team... Too much fun to watch. Just turned the game on, down by 10 late with the Splash Brothers struggling and now it's a 3 point game after a pair of Curry threes. Green is so key to their defense too. Pay that man.

It looks absolutely devastating. I don't get the hate for it, especially when he's up against a luchador and lucha libre has a decent number of moves that don't look very painful and require a tonne of assistance from the receiver. There are some valid criticisms of Okada and I don't think he's as good as the Meltzer praise leads one to believe, but hurty looking moves ain't one of the issues in my mind. That awful submission where he leaves his opponent's arm free right by his head drives me nuts, sure. The Rainmaker though? Nah. Saying all that, I really do like Dragon Lee. He's one of my favourite luchadores going today.

Yeah, Fox is the drizzling shits. He's everything I dislike about indy wrestling. I was tempted to just vote for ADR and stop the suffering but I could tell that Gulak had more to offer.

Oh shit, Scott Steiner is about to cut a promo on Dragon Lee because he's at 33.3%.

YES! OMG YES! I couldn't quite put my finger on what he looked like but that's it!

Dragon Lee is really great but Okada had a pretty special year. Why hate the dropkick? It's not a finisher but he gets such ludicrous air, freezes, then pops them in the head. It's an art form and he builds up to the move with psychology, so it gets an extra big pop on top of the pure athleticism involved.

I watched a bunch of Gulak matches on youtube. The first four or five didn't do anything for me, though that was usually almost entirely on the shoulders of his opponents. Then I watched that Gacy match Dylan highlighted and I was blown away. That's the kind of pro wrestling I love. I think there were three rope runs in the entire 35 minutes, no Irish whips, every slam was a struggle to execute, really great limb work, chain wrestling, and counters to escape holds. Gacy was fine but the match was noticably worse off when he was on offense but thankfully that was for about 20-30% of the match. And, when he was on offense, Gulak sold his offense in such a believable, neat way by coughing and hacking. Drew just stretched his joints and focused on the knee and ankle (which makes sense for a variety of reasons, least of which is Gacy's backbreaker would be less effective). Excellent match and an all world performance by Gulak. I get the hype now. I'd love to see his CZW stuff with Busick but it's not on VOD and Highspots charges $25 shipping to Canada, so fuck them. Here's the match in question, I highly recommend it:

He could have one of his two or three good games a year during the playoffs though.

I'm watching the Texano street fight and so far so good. Holy smokes, that garbage bin exploding on impact was hilarious.

TSN sez it's a 2nd from this year, so slightly steeper in price than Stewart. Stewart is purely for the present whereas the Canucks jumped ahead in terms of development with the 2nd for Bärtschi. They did a similar thing when they traded Forsling for Clendening. I liked that less, as Forsling was showing real promise but I suppose it was a case of selling high after the WJC.

lol, the 2nd round pick is from 2017. So, we get to keep the 2nd for the really deep draft Thanks, Calgary!

Did the Canucks just get Bärtschi for a 2nd rounder? He's been dog shit for the Flames by the looks of it but he had real potential. Pretty good but not great numbers in the A. But for a 2nd, I really think it's a good move.

Jesus, the more I think of it, the more that makes sense. It would go a long way in explaining the obtuse nature of Brysynner's posts some of the time.

See this is the question of was it his say, or the company that books him and, in theory, writes his promos and lays out his matches. While his unscripted youtube promos are better than the stuff he's cutting on TV regularly, some of those aforementioned issues pop up (but not nearly as often). Also, we can only vote on what we see, not on what may exist but does not because of Vince McMahon.

What are Alberto's best matches I should check out before voting? His last few months in WWE are a blur in my head. I've seen his ROH stuff, but what are his best matches in AAA and WWE from March up until his release? The one thing he does have going for him was that incredible promo he cut for Lucha Underground before the Texano run-in. So much passion. I'm watching all the Gulak matches that are up on youtube from the past year (including the Gacy match Dylan mentioned) and will track down the Busick match from April. I've avoided CZW like the plague because CZW but I'm more than willing to give this guy a fair shake.

Man, I want to vote Okabayashi after watching a bunch of his matches from Jan and Feb but he just didn't work enough last year (20 matches according to wrestlingdata.com). He's like what I'd like to see out of Ryback (minus the Japanese convention of having a minimum of 3 strike exchanges throughout a 10 minute match). He also forms one helluva hoss team with Sekimoto. I dig him a lot. Ambrose was so sooo good for a while there. Then he became a parody of himself, complete with shitty props and getting too cutesy with his promos and character. Austin's criticisms of Ambrose are spot on. He needs to tone it down and veer a little more towards psychopath. He can do this while still being a babyface. His match with Rollins posted by Rippa was incredible but then he kept trying to recapture that match and never accomplished it. He's had a string of really disappointing PPV matches, though the blame is shared on that. He still has massive potential but he needs to adjust a few things. I'm going to watch some more of the Okabyashi matches from the period of eligibility. Right now I'm leaning towards a reluctant Ambrose vote.

Dusty looks like he's wearing a Leigh Francis type mask.

Holy shit, you're back! Welcome back, bud! We missed you. On topic: Why can't they just use the AKI reversal system? It's too easy to reverse moves in this game. I feel like there was a whole psychology with the R+L reversal buttons. You could psych guys out with different strings of attack or use the same one a few times to screw with them. What little art was in that system was killed by having a singular button for reversals.

Man, I remember all the hype around Connolly and how it was just a matter of when and not if he would break out. What's the success rate of late 2nd round picks yielding NHL players? While Connolly is leaning heavily towards bust material, he will still likely be the better player than either of the players those picks turn out to be. Coburn is a big dude that can skate pretty well but I've never really been impressed with his tools or his decision making. It seemed like he had Kimmo to bail him out whenever he made a bad read though. I really don't like either deal from a TBL perspective. Gudas is awesome and is a match made in heaven for Philly fans, as you say. The 1st is for the 2015 draft? That's pretty damn good return on a player I think is way more hype than substance. Coburn won't have the Timonen safety net in Tampa either, so he could end up being a liability that Stevie paid a large price for. Is it just me or does there seem to be way, way more action in the buildup to the deadline than years prior? I like it.

I usually just stick to the tournament but I'm not working much, so I have extra time and I've been checking out as much college ball as possible. It's been a real blast and while I don't have a team to get behind, just familiarizing myself with teams prior to the tournament has been engaging enough for me. That UNC/Duke game from a few weeks ago that went to OT was one of the better basketball games I've seen this season. I've watched 4 Kentucky beatdowns and I don't see how anybody could beat them. They're so polished and complete. If they go all the way, how does this team stack up with Knight's Hoosiers from '76? I thought Arkansas would give them a decent test after seeing the Razorbacks beat Texas A&M but Kentucky smacked them around. Anyway, I'm super psyched for both the DVDVR incarnation and the real version of March Madness. This'll be the first time I check out the conference tournaments. What's set up to be the most interesting tourny?

And he kicked LeBron in the dick.